For years, I tried to cleanse and/or detox with every natural recipe or health food store product I could find. Even mainstream doctors told me my system was sluggish and toxic, a word you seldom hear out of their mouths. Every attempt failed mainly because of hypoglycemia issues at the time. I just could not stick with a program for more than 3-4 hours without just feeling awful. Enter bentonite clay. It is a little nasty to get down (it is, after all, CLAY), but the effect was incredible. It is a little hard on the tummy if you do not drink enough water, but other than that, I felt no differences or side effects. Bowel movements may change... no bentonite clay ever is absorbed into the body, so it ALL comes out! After a couple of days, I felt clean and light like I had not in years, and many FMS and CFS symptoms were either eliminated or minimized. Continuing to take it daily for a while was a challenge due to the "yucky" factor... started putting it into very large gel capsules and swallowing several with a couple of glasses of water. Bentonite clay is my favorite detox, very gentle and mild and highly effective. I take it for a few days at a time about every other month or so.
I was looking up the differences between diatomaceous earth and bentonite clay the other day when I came on this thread, as someone had told me they are one and the same. They are not the same, but I understand there is a lot of similarity in action. One is from once-living organisms, diatoms, and one is volcanic ash. Diatomaceous earth sounds a little more... aggressive? maybe... must really get after the parasites.
The physical properties of bentonite clay had never been explained to me before in terms of negative ions, so I found this site and its links extremely informative. No wonder it worked so well for me.
http://www.naturalnews.com/clay.html
Very curious now about diatomaceous earth! Will stay tuned.